Gift of Bowling Keeps Giving as Eisenhower's Harnden Pursues Championship Repeat
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
January 30, 2025
Birthday parties usually feature the best gifts for the person celebrating the birthday. But in this case, the best gift might have ended up going to one of the party’s attendees.
Back when he was in fifth grade, current Utica Eisenhower senior bowler Dylan Harnden was invited to a birthday party at Shelby Lanes in Shelby Township by friend and current Eisenhower bowling teammate Kingston Corpuz.
That day, they celebrated Corpuz – and Harnden received the gift of being introduced to bowling.
“That was his first time bowling, and he basically got the bug that he wanted to bowl,” he said Dylan’s father and current Eisenhower coach Mark Harnden. “From that point forward, he just kind of wanted to get better and better.”
The last couple of years, it can be argued that there’s been no better high schooler in the state.
Last year as a junior, Harnden captured the Division 1 Singles Finals title after also winning his Regional. Naturally, he was named to the all-state Dream Team by the Michigan High School Interscholastic Bowling Coaches Association.
This season, Harnden completed a unique career trifecta by winning the individual title at the Macomb County championship.
“I can say that I’ve won that tournament along with other great Macomb bowlers who have won that tournament,” he said. “It was great to see myself winning it.”
In addition, Harnden is sporting a 222 average — one pin below his average last year — and has scholarship offers in tow from two prestigious college bowling programs, St. Ambrose University in Iowa and Trine University in Indiana.
Not bad for someone who didn’t know anything about the sport until that birthday party invite roughly seven years ago.
“It only took me maybe about a half year to a year to get the hang of everything and get really good,” Harnden said. “It was interesting at first.”
In addition to winning the state title last season, Harnden as a sophomore in 2023 finished first out of the qualifying block at the Division 1 Final but ended up falling to eventual champion Brendan Riley of Waterford Mott in the quarterfinal round.
This year, Harnden’s big objective has been continuing to master mental aspects of the game.
“A lot of things this year compared to last year is the same stuff, except for trying to expand my knowledge,” he said. “Knowing how to transition better, knowing what balls to go to and trying to hit different shots. Just expanding knowledge mainly from last year to this year just so if I encounter new scenarios, I can use it better.”
Mark Harnden said Dylan when he was younger tried a one-handed bowling style, but quickly discovered that going with the two-handed style was a better fit for him.
“It allowed him to bowl with a heavier bowling ball,” he said. “As you know, heavier balls don’t tend to deflect off the pins.”
This year, not only could Dylan Harnden be a contender to win another Singles Finals title, but he has a decent shot of being part of a team champion thanks to a merger.
The Utica and Eisenhower bowling programs joined forces as one this year, something Mark Harnden said was talked about for a while due to low participation numbers experienced by both programs.
“We’re trying to really allow two programs to survive in the downside until more kids get interested in bowling,” he said.
What the merger has created is a pair of powerful combined Utica-Eisenhower programs.
The girls team now features contributors from last season’s Macomb Area Conference Red and White champions joined together as one, with returning all-state bowlers Ava Mazza (sophomore, Utica) and Sophia Matheson (senior, Eisenhower) atop an incredibly deep lineup.
For the boys, what was the outstanding duo of Harnden and Corpuz has turned into a terrific trio, with sophomore Marco Mazza joining the fray. Ava and Marco Mazza are twins whose father, John, bowled professionally.
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
(Photo of Dylan Harnden courtesy of the Harnden family.)
Unforgettable Afternoon Nets Traverse City Christian Boys' 1st Finals Title
By
Scott DeCamp
Special for MHSAA.com
March 1, 2024
MUSKEGON – Lunch may not have been sitting too well with members of Traverse City Christian’s boys bowling team Friday afternoon.
The Sabres struggled, by their standards, during the qualifying block of the MHSAA Division 4 Final at Northway Lanes and didn’t know if they’d even make match play.
They felt much better before dinner time. Traverse City Christian ripped through bracket play and captured the first Finals title in the school’s boys bowling history, capping the run with a three-games-to-one victory over Jonesville in the championship match.
About 90 minutes later, Traverse City Christian’s girls team seized the state title for a Sabres sweep.
“When (the boys bowlers) went into lunch, we didn’t even know if we made it into the (bracket) – the final eight – because they weren’t doing so hot,” Traverse City Christian coach Andy Radtke said. “I was really disappointed because they worked so hard. To me, that was the hugest thing.
“And then to come out and shoot the 256 Baker right off the bat, I mean, it changed the narrative.”
Traverse City Christian shot 256 in its first game of a Quarterfinal sweep against Houghton Lake. The Sabres shot 256, 200, and 193 in the quarters. In a 3-1 Semifinal win over St. Charles, the Sabres went 201, 200, 201, and 169.
In the Final, Traverse City Christian and Jonesville alternated Baker game wins. The Sabres took the first (180-169) and third (194-161) and the Comets won the second game (196-181). TCC won the decisive fourth game by the slimmest of margins, 200-199, when the last Jonesville bowler threw a decent ball but left the 4-6-7-9-10 pins in what bowlers call the “Greek Church.”
“That last shot was unbelievable. That was still a good shot and maybe a seven-count was what we needed (to win the fourth game), but with the Greek Church, that was brutal,” said Jonesville coach Matt Molinaro, whose 2018 squad captured the Division 3 title at Northway Lanes. The Comets won a Division 4 championship in 2014 as well.
“I had a couple of guys that were struggling,” Molinaro said. “They couldn’t get through it. Then it was too late in the game to try and sub out. … I really thought we were going to be OK. After that third game, I grouped them up and said, ‘Hey, you know we’re winning this, right?’ (The bowlers responded) ‘Yeah, we’re winning.’ And then we came out and they answered. They did everything they had to do.”
Brent Wheat, the “mechanics guy” on Traverse City Christian’s coaching staff and Radtke’s son-in-law, wasn’t certain at the time what the Sabres needed to do to pull off the fourth game.
In fairness to Wheat, he hustles back and forth between boys and girls competitions and he was trying to keep an eye on Traverse City Christian’s girls squad that was taking on Jonesville in a Semifinal.
“It took a minute to process because we thought that we weren’t going to win that game (game four), and then (the Jonesville bowler’s) ball went unfortunately a little heavy. And then we were doing the math, trying to figure it out, and then it clicked, ‘Oh, my gosh, it was one pin,’” Wheat said. “There’s this elation down there, all these happy thoughts, and I have to come down to the girls. We’re in a battle with Jonesville in the Semifinals for the girls.”
Traverse City Christian was the final of eight squads to make it out of the 16-team qualifying block. The Sabres totaled 3,107 pins in qualifying rounds. Houghton Lake finished first in qualifying at 3,472.
Jonesville was second in qualifying at 3,377. In best-of-five match play, Jonesville beat Riverview Gabriel Richard in the Quarterfinal (3-1) and Saginaw Nouvel Catholic Central in the Semifinal (3-0).
Traverse City Christian’s team featured two seniors, one junior, one sophomore, and two freshmen, which makes Wheat pretty optimistic about the future as well.
For Sabres senior Tristan Lhamon, the time was now to realize the dream.
“This means a lot. These are some of my best friends, and I get to do it with them. It’s an amazing thing, and I love it,” Lhamon said. “We are really good at persevering. We have to battle some of the top D-1 teams, and we are so bonded by Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior, all of us, and we work together, we fight, and we’re really good at it.”
Wheat called the Traverse City Christian bowling program “a family business.”
Business was really good Friday.
“My in-laws and I started doing this 16 years ago,” Wheat said. “Our first year here, we took one boy, he was in ninth grade, and we said, ‘Man, wouldn’t it be cool to make it some day?’ And then we won one of these with the girls over COVID and it was like, ‘Gosh, this is unreal. We never thought that it was even possible.’ And then a dream happens today … I’m speechless, really.”